Trio enthral Kemnay

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Published:14:24Friday 16 March 2012

IF proof is needed for the lasting value of live music in today’s cybernetic world, it can be found with musicians like the Greenwich Trio.

Last Saturday’s performance at the Kemnay Church Centre was superbly compelling. Each artist was absorbed in the whole work, not just his or her own part in it. A genuinely thankful audience rose to its feet. As one of them remarked, “It is us that should be bowing to them, not the other way round.”

The Greenwich trio, so-called because they met in London, is supported by the Tunnell Trust for talented young musicians. Lana Trotovšek (violin) hails from Slovenia, Duncan Strachan (‘cello) attended Lochaber High School and St Mary’s Music School, Edinburgh, and Yoko Misumi (piano) was born in Kyoto in Japan, winning a piano competition there at the age of fourteen.

The Piano Trio no 5 in G major by Mozart is a mature work, and the trio showed their appreciation with a gentle touch in the interplay of the themes, particularly in the movements in Theme and Variation and Rondo form.

The Trio élégiaque no 1 in G minor by Rachmaninov was a well-chosen contrast to the frivolities of the preceding piece.

Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in C Minor Op 66 opened with organ-like scales and arpeggios over a pedal point from the ‘cello, but the sepulchral mood was soon dispelled with episodes in romantic yet economic style. The second movement was a lilting “song without words,” while the third was another Mendelssohn speciality, a glittering tour of fingerboards and keyboard in perpetual motion. In the finale, contrasting ideas are weaved through a recurring Bach chorale theme in C minor. Here the trio revealed vast reserves of power as the chorale was overlaid by the first episode in the major key, bringing the work to a radiant conclusion.